Automation software gradually becomes the core function of manufacturing industry.
Introduction: At present, China's manufacturing industry is undergoing a profound transformation of taking the "new industrialization road", achieving sustainable development through the integration of industrialization and informatization. Since entering the 21st century, automation has become an important support and guarantee for the sustainable development of China's manufacturing industry. Under the national background of "integration of industrialization and informatization", the integration of industry and software will surely become the soul of modern industrial development.
Guided by the national policy of "developing modern industrial system and vigorously promoting the integration of informatization and industrialization", the promotion work themed on "industrial software" is in full swing. The integration of information technology and industrial technology, IT equipment and industrial equipment, begins to produce new scientific and technological achievements, forming new productive forces.
At present, China's manufacturing industry is undergoing a profound transformation of taking the "new industrialization road". Through the integration of industrialization and informatization, it realizes sustainable development. Since entering the 21st century, automation has become an important support and guarantee for the sustainable development of China's manufacturing industry. Under the national background of "integration of industrialization and informatization", the integration of industry and software will surely become the soul of modern industrial development.
Mr. Chen Zhi, Vice General Manager of Shougang Automation Information Technology Co., Ltd., believed that under the premise of "meeting user needs and using technology to drive", China's automation industry is constantly showing new and gratifying changes. That is, industrial control software is gradually becoming the trend and mainstream of the development of the automation industry. Under the impetus of market force, automation software is gradually becoming the new core function of the manufacturing industry.
As Mr. Ma Lixin, General Manager of Greater China Area of Germany 3S Software Co., Ltd., said, one of the important reasons why China has not yet become a manufacturing power is that domestic industries have not truly applied technical innovation methods to reduce costs, improve product quality, thereby enhancing the efficiency of the entire industrial chain and increasing the value-added of products. If we are to truly achieve the goal of transforming from a major manufacturing country to a strong one, we must rely on the industrial software industry, which is called the soul of industrial development.
The automation software market is experiencing high-speed growth.
In addition to having the nature of software, automation software also has distinct industry characteristics. With the continuous development of the automation industry, through the continuous accumulation of industry knowledge, taking industry application knowledge as a key element for the development of the automation industry, it gradually becomes the main factor for enterprises to adjust their economic structure and transform their mode of economic growth.
Currently, the industrial software market has already shown a trend of high-speed growth. In 2010, the global industrial software market size reached 80 billion euros. According to forecasts, its annual growth rate in the future will reach 8%. The rise of the industrial software market is closely related to the global industrial development trend.
According to the data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with the deepening development of software services and the integration of industrialization and informatization, the development momentum of information technology services and embedded software is good. In the first half of 2011, China's software industry achieved a software business income of 80.65 billion yuan, an increase of 29.3% over the same period last year, with a growth rate 0.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year; it realized a profit of 10.3 billion yuan, an increase of 34.9% over the same period last year. Among them, the embedded system software achieved an income of 14.43 billion yuan, an increase of 33.8% over the same period last year, with a growth rate 14.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year.
Automation software is an important part of the software industry, and improving the quality of automation software is also one of the important contents of developing the software industry. According to the national development plan, by 2015, the average annual growth rate of software service industry revenue will exceed 20%, accounting for more than 20% of the income of the electronics information industry, cultivating more than 10 enterprises with annual revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan. It is expected that by the end of the "12th Five-Year Plan", the scale of China's software service industry will exceed 1 trillion yuan. In the field of industrial control, hardware software has become a development trend. The competitiveness of automation enterprises is increasingly reflected in the competition of software application and development level!
Ms. Liang Ling, Vice General Manager of Jiusiyi, expressed that the importance of automation software will further increase. While demand is increasing, competition is intensifying. The product itself must be innovative, technologically advanced, and keep pace with the times, realizing the revolution from the "second generation" to the "third generation", entering the era of modularization, componentization, service-based collaboration, network computing, and "cloud" computing. Moreover, the integration of automation software and information systems becomes increasingly close, the software functions become more refined, data collection becomes more flexible, human-computer interaction greatly improves, and the requirements for usability and openness have significantly increased.
Software functions create future control systems
Recently, KUKA released the new generation of robot products, KRC4, which is a control system integrating robot control, motion control, logic control, and process control. A prominent feature of this product is that in the new control system, KUKA systematically abandoned the dedicated hardware with significant usage restrictions and replaced it with software functions.
This completely new systematic method, as a software function in the implementation of control processes, can reduce the number of hardware modules by 35% and the number of connectors and cables by 50%.
At the same time, cloud computing technology has also had a profound impact on automation software, making massive information no longer a bottleneck for the development of automation software. In the era of cloud computing, users can easily analyze and process massive amounts of automation and information data, meeting the needs of large-scale application systems, while simultaneously achieving complex automation and information system control. The storage, calculation, analysis, and querying of large amounts of data and their relationships will become easy, and the analysis and processing of massive information will become a routine function of configuration software.
In today's automation systems, software occupies the "soul" position, but its value proportion is relatively low, only accounting for 5%-10%. In the era of cloud computing, the system's requirement for hardware decreases, while the requirement for software increases continuously. Therefore, the value proportion and importance of software in the automation industry will increase significantly.
There is no doubt that the cloud computing model will bring about tremendous changes in the automation software industry. How to grasp the trend of IT development and develop the next generation of automation software based on cloud computing? How to make old versions of automation software compatible with cloud computing platforms? These will become topics that automation software companies need to consider and study.
The software service market faces huge opportunities
For today's automation suppliers, the service industry remains one of the best opportunities for revenue growth. Industrial software is also a service. Mr. Chen Zhi believed that this is not just a concept, but a process, a system, and a systematic project. Not only is software a service, but more clearly speaking, industrial control software is also a service, and an important part of modern services. This service is built in a systematic, standardized, procedural manner as a new type of software service guarantee system.
Kevin Crisafulli, senior analyst at ARC Advisory Group, pointed out that now, once again, we stand at the forefront of the wave of change in the service industry. After the economic crisis, many end-users found that due to the impending end of life of many automation systems, they faced more severe problems than before the crisis. Now, users need to fill this application gap, and thus their dependence on automation suppliers has never been greater than ever.
Dr. Siegfried Russwurm, CEO of Siemens Industry Sector, stated at the "Siemens China Industry Day 2011" that Siemens would focus more on the service business of technology and link relevant industry activities with all categories of technology and all levels of the value chain. Siemens Customer Service Group has 14,000 service experts worldwide who will provide services throughout the entire lifecycle of products and plants.
According to statistics, the total global service market size was 96 billion euros in 2010 and will increase to 126 billion euros by 2016, with an annual growth rate exceeding 5%. During the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, China's industry will pay more attention to structural adjustment and upgrading, and the potential of the service market is great, awaiting further exploration by automation enterprises.